Bengaluru: Kannada language will be a mandatory subject in classes one to ten in schools affiliated to Karnataka board and a compulsory medium of instruction from classes one to five.

This is envisaged in the Kannada Language Learning Bill, 2015 making Kannada a mandatory subject in classes one to ten and Right To Education Act Amendment Bill which were passed by a voice vote in the state Assembly today.

The second bill amended Section 29 (2) of the Right To Education Act to change the provision “medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in mother’s tongue” to “Kannada or mother tongue will be medium of instruction in primary schools” from classes to one to five.

The amendment would help the government in its arguments before the Supreme Court when the curative petition related to its language policy is taken up.

The Supreme Court had rejected a revision petition filed by the state government seeking review of its ruling which upheld a Karnataka High Court judgement striking down its government order issued in 1994 to impose Kannada or mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary schools.

Bengaluru: In a two-pronged move, Karnataka government today introduced bills to make Kannada language a mandatory subject in classes one to ten in schools affiliated to the state board and also a compulsory medium of instruction from classes one to five.

The Kannada Language Learning Bill, 2015 seeks to make Kannada a mandatory subject in classes one to ten in all schools affiliated to the state board.

In tandem, a bill to amend the Right to Education Act was also introduced by Karnataka Primary and Secondary Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar.

The bill amended Section 29 (2) of the Right To Education Act to change the provision “medium of instruction shall, as far as practicable, be in mother’s tongue” to “Kannada or mother tongue will be medium of instruction in primary schools” from classes to one to five.

The amendment would help the government in its arguments before the Supreme Court when the curative petition is taken up.

The Supreme Court had rejected a revision petition filed by the state government seeking review of its ruling which upheld a Karnataka High Court judgement striking down an order issued by the state government in 1994 to impose Kannada or mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary schools.

The curative petition filed by the government is yet to be heard by the Supreme Court.

The cabinet had on March 19 approved the proposed amendment bill before tabling it in the assembly.

Yet another bill to amend Karnataka State Civil Services (Regulation of Transfer of Teachers) Act, 2007 was also introduced, which seeks to increase the cap on teachers’ transfer from the present five per cent to eight percent.

Bengaluru: Renowned writer Siddalingaiah will chair the three-day 81st Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelan at Shravanabelagola from February 1, 2015. It is the first time that a Dalit writer will chair the sammelan.

President of Kannada Sahitya Parishat (KSP), Pundalika Halambi announced the name of the Siddalingaiah at a press conference held in the city on Friday. His name was suggested by the KSP Executive members at the meeting held on Friday.

“Prof. Siddalingaiah was chosen not only because he is prominent Dalit writer, but also because he is a writer par excellence in Kannada literature,” Mr. Halambi said.

Prof. Siddalingaiah is a leading Kannada poet and intellectual. He is one of the founders of the Dalit Sangharsha Samiti along with Devenur Mahadeva and B. Krishnappa. He played a significant role in the Dalit movement in Karnataka in the 1970s and 1980s.

His prominent works are Hole Madigara Haadu, Saviraru Nadigalu, Kappu Kadina Haadu, Meravanige (complete works), Panchama and Nelasama (plays), Grama Devathegalu (Ph.D. thesis). Ooru Keri , his autobiography, created a sensation in Kannada literature. Besides being a member of Legislative Council, he also headed the Kannada Development Authority and the Kannada Book Authority.

Meanwhile, Pundalika Halambi said the Parishat will not hold Sahitya Sammelana from now on in case the state government fails to impart primary education in Kannada medium mandatorily within the deadline of one year given by KSP.

New Delhi: Cyber attacks seem to be the new mode of operation for people who are perpetrators of ‘hate crime’ against Northeasterners. It has hardly been a week that the news of a derogatory Facebook post targeting the assaulted Manipuri youth was doing rounds, reports have flowed in that Binalakshmi Nepram, founder of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, and a vocal activist for the northeast people in Delhi received a threat message via mail.

Informing this today, Nepram said that she received a threatening email from a gmail account user who is yet to be identified.

A case in this regard vide FIR No. 840/14 u/s 507 IPC & 66-A IT Act has been registered. The Cyber crime division of Delhi Police are investigating into the matter. No arrests have been made so far.

It may be mentioned here that just a day earlier, a case was registered against one Priyanka Ravi, 25, a medical electronics graduate from M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, for abusing, inciting hatred, and intentionally attempting to provoke breach of peace. She posted derogatory comments on the timeline of the Manipuri youth who was assaulted for not conversing in local Kannada language.

In Gurgaon, two men from Nagaland youths were beaten up by a group, which warned them to tell all people from the North East to leave the neighbourhood.

They did not speak Kannada, the language of the state they live in. They, therefore, were “legitimate” targets of violence in a city that has benefitted the most from India’s shift from Nehruvian Socialism to free market economy. The fact that they contribute to the city, and the province’s income, meant nothing. That they pay taxes that keep the country afloat had no value. They were, after all, North Easterners stranded in mainland India.

Their nationality is non-negotiable at all times, other than when they are victim to racist attacks across Indian cities, be it Delhi or Bangalore. It is non-negotiable when they may choose to assert their otherness; not when otherness is inflicted on them.

It is especially so when an outside entity claims them as its own. Let China make claims of Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part and out comes the Indian State with the mantras of sovereignty and patriotism that will never compromise on its territorial integrity. This is the time when the top functionaries of the Indian State, right up to the Prime Minister, make visits to the North East to dance with the “natives” and announce this or that package for this or that benefit of the 7 states collectively referred to as the North East.

Rest of the time they are just the ‘Mongolian fringe’ of the undeclared Aryan state, which has grudgingly accepted the erstwhile Dravidians as its own, but failed to do the same for the fringe. Failed, perhaps, is the wrong word for the State has never made a real attempt to assimilate the North East, while respecting the differences that define and shape the territory.

The failure is not always an in-your-face violence that the State, or its patriotic citizenry, inflicts on the North Easterners. There is a subtlety, at once tragic and perversely beautiful, that the Indian State deploys to achieve this failure. The State forgets, at times, to include Kiren Rijju, the Minister of State for Home and a Member of Parliament from Arunachal Pradesh, not only in the delegation for talks but also from state banquets hosted by the President for Chinese President Xi Jinping during his India visit, an omission never explained, not even to term it as coincidental. At other times, the State chooses Meghalaya as the place of punish posting for the Governors appointed under the previous government who refuse to resign as per the wish of the incumbent government.

The British colonials had always seen and treated the “Mongolian fringe” as an outpost, as a buffer from threats from South East Asia, to safeguard their Indian colony from the same. A total of 67 years after they packed their bags, independent India continues to do the same with all the repressive instruments deployed to keep the “natives” enslaved. In fact it has gone further by converting the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Ordinance, promulgated by the British in 1942 to suppress the Quit India Movement, into the Armed Forces Special Powers (Assam and Manipur) Act, 1958, and enforcing it all over the North East.

The Indian State keeps talking about humanising the draconian act that enables the security forces to maim, rape, and kill citizens with impunity. The State keeps talking of political solutions, as opposed to military ones. The State keeps on negotiating with this or that insurgent group. Yet, the same State treats every North Easterner as a perennial suspect, the other.

And so do the “Indian” citizens. This is the only thing worse than the violent and subtle racism North Easterners face from the Indian state. To invoke Lawrence Liang and Golan Naulak’s idea of two distinct forms of racism, the footnote vis-à-vis the front-page, the North Easterners are condemned to face both. They experience the footnote racism in everyday life, subtle, but as dehumanising as the explicit and violent front-page forms of the same. They feel it when denied rented accommodation for nothing other than being what they are. They feel it when their food habits are not merely questioned but beget violent attacks. They feel it when the Delhi police issue an advisory suggesting that North Eastern girls not wear revealing dresses to escape sexual harassment and assault. They feel it when it is suggested by the same advisory that they not cook their regional cuisine, especially, Akhuni and Bamboo shoots, as it could offend the sensibilities of the local people. They feel it the most when they realise there are no such advisories issued for any other ethnic, regional, or whatsoever kind of community defined by whatsoever yardstick.

This is not to say that front-page racism is less endemic than these subtle forms of labelling North Easterners as other. Nor does this mean that these two are discernably separate from each other. How can one separate racist abuses like “chinki”, which can get the abuser a sentence of 5 years (as most of the North Easterners are from Scheduled Tribes and therefore protected by the provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Preventions of Atrocities) Act), from physical attacks that killed Nido Tania, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, in an “allegedly” racist attack?

One may do so, of course, by the liberal use of “allegedly” alongside acts of racism. What else but racism can explain the repeated attacks on the people from the North East across India? How many more murders does one need to call racism what it is? Was not the rumour mongering coupled with physical attacks on North East students in Bangalore, which lead to their mass exodus, enough to set the bell ringing? Should not the mysterious death of Richard Loitam, a student from Manipur, after an altercation with his seniors in Bangalore have made the State take special notice?

Perhaps it cannot till it remains in a permanent denial mode, i.e. until things turn violent and come under the media gaze. And, when this happens routinely, it rushes in to offer cosmetic solutions to the racist prejudices against the North East people that are institutionalised and engrained in the system. The futility of its lip service, however, gets exposed by the fact that no one has ever been convicted for even one year for racially abusing someone as ‘chinki’, forget the five year term that such an abuse can bring. Compare this with the convictions for casteist abuses covered under the provisions of the same Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Preventions of Atrocities) Act.

I wonder how many North East citizens would, in fact, dare to go lodge such a complaint with the police; they have to live in the same neighbourhoods in mainland India to make a livelihood, where they are most often a minority. They know what their predicament would be in the police stations, which have few, if any, officers from their community, as against the offenders who would share socio-cultural bonds with many of the officers.

This lack of redress to everyday racism is what sustains the discrimination against North Easterners, citizens of India lest one forgets, and paves way for the serious periodic attacks broadcast in the media. Till the State ensures that the community feels confident enough to report everyday violations, and perpetrators get prosecuted, the vicious cycle of violence will not stop. Racism is a serious crime, not something to wish away with denial. Hope for change will begin with justice to T. Michael Lamjathang Haokip and his friends attacked in Bangalore.

Avinash Pandey, is Programme Coordinator, Right to Food Programme, Asian Human Rights Commission. He can be contacted at avinash.pandey@ahrc.asia

Bangalore: In an apparent incident of hate crime, a 24-year old engineering student from Manipur was beaten by a gang of three men in Bangalore for not knowing Kannada.

The attack took place past midnight in Indiranagar, a part of the city which has a high density of student population, particularly from North East states and Africa.

The victim of the latest attack Michael Lamjathang Haokip, president of the Thadou (Manipuri tribe) Students’ Association of Bangalore, sustained injuries to his head and back.

In his complaint, Micheal alleged that he was asked to leave the state, if he doesn’t know how to speak Kannada, and was said that this is India and not China. Reportedly, his friends had faced similar attacks in the same area in the past.

Haokip further alleged that the people who gathered at the scene took the side of the attackers, instead helping him. The mob scattered only after the police patrol car arrived to the spot.

Additional commissioner of police Alok Kumar said, “Three persons have been arrested and investigations are on to ascertain if this was a hate crime.”

Poet K.S. Nisar Ahmed at the function to receive the Govinda Pai Memorial Award in Udupi.

Udupi: Celebrated Kannada poet and writer, Prof. K. S. Nisar Ahmed was honoured with the prestigious Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Memorial Award at a function organised by the Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Research Centre and other organizations here. The award carries a citation and a cheque of Rs. 1 lakh.

Urban Development Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake, who spoke after presenting the annual award, said that Prof. Ahmed’s contribution to Kannada literature was invaluable.

Mr. Sorake said that it was fitting that the poet should get the Govinda Pai award. “Prof. Ahmed is a jewel of Kannada literature whom we all like and treasure,” he said.

In his acceptance speech, Prof. Ahmed said that poets such as the late D.V. Gundappa and the late Govinda Pai had a big influence on him. In addition to being a poet, Govinda Pai was a scholar who did a lot of research, he said.

Earlier, B.A. Viveka Rai, former Vice-Chancellor of Kannada University, Hampi, said that writers such as the late D.R. Bendre and the late Kuvempu liked Prof. Ahmed a lot. It was when Prof. Ahmed became the president of the Kannada Sahitya Academy that literary programmes were held for the first time at the hobli-level, he added.